


Five Times John Watson Said "I Love You" and One Time He Didn't

by jonphaedrus



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (1984 TV), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: M/M, Old Fic Repost, cox & co era fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-11
Updated: 2014-11-11
Packaged: 2018-02-25 00:03:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2601257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Watson admits his love through the years, and Holmes understands as best he can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times John Watson Said "I Love You" and One Time He Didn't

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was originally written & posted in [2010](http://driftwoodq.livejournal.com/1982.html). has not been edited for reposting, so it's not on par with everything else but i figured i should migrate it off of lj ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

_1:28 April 1891_

 

The first time that John Watson ever told me he loved me we were in Switzerland, and would soon feel the harsh sting of separation come upon us for the first and most painful time. The morning and the memory stand out as clear as day in my mind, even now, so many years later. I could not forget them if I tried. I could feel John awakening in my arms. He does not like to listen to me extrapolate to him about the many endearing traits that he possesses when asleep, so I refrain from doing so. But he was wakening, slowly shifting around, feeling his extremities, and finding himself to be in working order. It was damp out, and I could tell immediately that his leg was paining him. His shoulder—it seemed to me—was not affected immediately, but there was a tensing of his right leg, which told me intimately that he would be having a hard time of it that day. He sighed, huffing through his mustache, and turned over in my arms, his sandy-blonde hair tousled with sleep. He was usually awake before I, so I did my utmost best to feign sleep. He knows me too well, however, and I felt more than heard his chuckle.

 

"I know that you are awake, Sherlock." His voice was roughened, not fully awake yet, and I was hard pressed to force a smile from my lips. We were alone. He had said my name. Small, minute pleasures like that were enough for me most of the time. "You can stop pretending." In the world where we lived, just knowing that he would say my name when there was nobody else around, however much I disliked my name after having Mycroft use it so often as weapon against me, simple pleasures were enough.

 

"Nonsense." I murmured, curling more around his body and burying my face in the warm skin at the crook of his neck, the place where his scent was most potent. "I am quite happily asleep. You are simply dreaming that I am awake. Now you will go back to sleep, and we will remain here until the sun truly rises and normal people decide it's time to wake up." Any time between five in the morning and nine in the morning was an ungodly time and nobody had any right to be up then. I, after all, had not slept all night, instead sitting up and pondering and thinking and trying to wrap my mind around many things, many things that would not allow me to wrap my mind around them. When faced with problems that will not relent I am deeply displeased. I have always hated puzzles that were missing some of their pieces, questions with no answers. Riddles have always fascinated me, except when they have no answers or make no sense. And some things that I thought about were impossible for me to answer fully.

 

Some things I thought about had no answers, no matter how hard I tried to find them.

 

I could feel his hand steal up to my hair and he smoothed it back from my head, lovingly, gently. I have always had an affection for feeling his fingers in my hair, and I tilted my face against his hand. His cheeks were rough with early morning stubble, rubbing against my own cheeks, abrading my skin. No matter how hard I had ever tried, I could not grow anything more than the barest hint of hair above my lip even after an extended period of time (later in my life I would find that I could, in fact, grow facial hair over the course of several months, but at the time I was not aware).

 

"Good morning." He told me. I grunted. He chuckled again, and I felt his warmth leave my side as he sat up, stretching as he woke fully. Then I had to open my eyes, to see with my own senses that he truly was beside me. The indulgence that I went through every morning when he woke was something I would not give up simply so that I could continue my dearth of sleep. The sun streaming in through the flap of our tent door highlighted his hair, making it glow the sort of golden-brown that people generally associate more with ripened wheat than pure gold. His tan, pensive face was relaxed into an expression of ease, and while his bad shoulder was forever put into a position of care, he seemed relaxed. I trailed my fingers down his spine slowly, counting his vertebrae, and I could feel him shudder at the touch.

 

"Yes." I replied, slowly, like the words did not belong on my tongue, as I was not yet ready to move. I was fully awake, but not yet talkative. That was something rare for me. Our exertions from last night were still making themselves felt on my body as I, too, sat up, and I could feel a soreness in my hips that was more good than it was painful. My backside was abused, but it was not enough to cause me to limp.

 

He looked at me, those ocean-blue eyes as calm and clear as a cloudless summer sky, and I could not help but smile back when he smiled.

 

"Your hair," he told me straight away, "looks like something climbed in and slept in it." Suddenly self-conscious, as I have always been obsessive about my appearance, I grabbed for the pocket mirror I always carried with me, found it missing from my vest where it lay, and had to fish in my coat before I came up with it. You never know when a looking glass can come in handy, and checked my hair. It did, in fact, look like something had climbed in and slept there. Perhaps it had been Watson's hands, as they were fond of staying in my raven locks. I quite liked my hair. So did he. I smoothed it down until it looked well enough that I could fix it when we got ready to leave, to follow my nemesis further across Switzerland, and he gave me a thoughtful look, as if studying some fine piece of art. "Yes, that makes it look more like it's usual self."

 

"Yours is rather ruffled." I told him, and he shrugged slightly. I could feel the cold Swiss morning air brush in past the cloth of the tent and felt goose bumps prickle on my spine and down my arms, but Watson seemed too entranced with the outdoor world to be cold.

 

Indeed, it was beautiful. The sun rising over the corners of the Alps, making their peaks glow with the sparkling glow of sun on snow and creating elongated shadows that criss-crossed the low-lying valleys and the cresting clouds scudding across the blue sky, the grass waving in the breeze. The only thing more beautiful I had ever seen was the doctor's face when he fell into completion at my hands, or held me as we dropped off to sleep. I let my hand steal down to tangle with his and he gripped my fingers tightly, like if he let go I would simply vanish like the mist before the dawn.

 

"I love you," he told me softly, and I looked at him. They were merely words, simply words. They were only the movement of the human tongue against the teeth, the vibration of vocal cords. The thousands of years of evolution building up into the human ability to produce sound in a consistent manner that replicated itself every time used, and when the mind put itself to it could form words that were understandable to other humans. I knew all that, yes. I knew the scientific reason behind words. I was a scientist, not a poet like my dear doctor. But it still meant something. He didn't expect me to answer, it was not something I would say and we both knew it. But I rested my head on his broad shoulders, squeezed his fingers a little tighter.

 

"I know." I replied, and he smiled. 

 

 

 

 

 

_2: 18 March 1894_

 

"You're surprised to see me, sir," They were the first words that I had spoken to John H. Watson in three years. They were innocuous, simple words. Out of context they would be nothing more than an explanation, perhaps a point to someone who did not know you, a reason. But I could feel my chest burning at the barest mention of their noise in my throat, as it was not out of context for me. I wanted to drop the disguise immediately and throw my arms around my oldest, closest, dearest friend. But I could not. I wanted to pull him to me, apologize over and over again and swear that I would never do such a thing again, that I would never let him go, but I could not.

 

"Yes." He responded, somewhat amazed to see me standing in his study. He had clearly not recognized me yet, for which I was thankful. Had he known who I truly was at that instant, I should have been forced to immediately break down and tell him everything that I had thought of and known in three long, horrible years. Three years without Watson had nearly been the end of me, not the traveling or the running. Three years without my Boswell, without knowing how much he truly loved me, without knowing how much he cared, only remembering. Only gifted with the harsh, bare memories of life, where hindsight is much clearer, knowing what I could have done to prevent that horrible separation. To tell him what I truly felt. To tell him that I loved him.

 

"Well, I've a conscience, sir, and when I chanced to see you go into this house, as I came hobbling after you, I thought to myself, I'll just step in and see that kind gentleman, and tell him that if I was a bit gruff in my manner there was not any harm meant, and that I am much obliged to him for picking up my books." I told him, and I could feel my heart pounding in rapid staccato against my ribs, and I fought off a quiver in my voice, a tremble in my hands. His blue, blue eyes were looking down at me, the stoop of my character making me just slightly shorter than he. Never had I wanted to take him in my arms more than in that moment.

 

"You make too much of a trifle, may I ask how you knew who I was?" He asked me, still seemingly confused. I did not wish to keep him in the dark much longer. I shrugged, trying my best to seem nonchalant and uncaring, like this was merely a visit, that I had never met him before. That I had never died a little death in his arms, screaming and crying his name and begging for _more, more, more._

 

"Well, sir, if it isn't too great a liberty, I am a neighbor of yours, for you'll find my little bookshop at the corner of Church Street, and very happy to see you, I am sure. Maybe you collect yourself, sir. Here's BRITISH BIRDS, and CATULLUS, and THE HOLY WAR--a bargain, every one of them. With five volumes you could just fill that gap on that second shelf. It looks untidy, does it not, sir?" The gap was indeed on the second shelf. He always left a gap on the second shelf, because when we had first moved in together I had insisted that a gap be left for my Persian slipper. Of course, it eventually migrated to the coal scuttle and then further to wherever it ended up next, but he kept up the habit anyway. I pointed slightly with my nose, just so that he would turn long enough to give me a moment to drop the disguise.

 

He looked over, distracted by the shelf, and I pulled off my disguise and sat the pieces on Watson's desk, and then he looked back at me and a child could have read the emotions running across his face in rapid succession. I could feel my heart pounding, and I was furtively wishing for the godlike gifts of mind reading that my brother possessed, that innate ability to know exactly what someone was thinking at any given time. I wanted to know what Watson would think upon seeing me again, whether or not he would throw me out or accept me back into his arms. I had hurt him so much already, how could he ever take me back now? His marriage had been hard for us, yes, but it had been of necessity. It needed to happen, to keep us safe, and we both knew that I could never marry a woman. But this time, this time I had nearly broken my own heart, let alone his. At least I had been given the solace of knowing he was alive and well in body, if not in spirit, and that had been enough.

 

Watson let out a soft, heavy sigh, the kind of sigh that means more than words, a sigh of relief. Disbelief. Hope. Surprise was the first emotion, then shock, then amazement clouded his handsome features, and then right before his knees buckled and he crumpled into his chair in a dead faint I saw the most frank and absolute expression of love I have ever seen from another human being. His eyes practically glowed for that single moment, and I could feel the heat of his love in them.

 

Then I was at his side, carefully undoing his collar and whetting his lips with a spot of brandy before I managed enough composure to kiss his forehead without breaking down, to know that I may have had him back at last. 

 

When his eyes opened, bleary and coming to, I winced out my best 'I'm sorry' smile, and I think the pain in my eyes was enough to tell him the truth, more than if I had said the words I so abhorred saying. He had learned early on what a stranger I am to admitting my own failures, and this had been my greatest one yet. "My dear Watson," I told him, doing my utmost best to keep my voice from shaking, "I owe you a thousand apologies. I had no idea that you would be so affected." I could feel his warmth in my arms, his breath on my cheek; I could feel that he was real, alive and real.

 

Watson gripped me tightly by the arms; his handsome face lighting up like someone had just turned the sun on him to act as an illuminating device, like all that was good in the world had gone inside him and filled him up with so much light he glowed. At that moment I never wanted him to let go. I had never been, for lack of a better word, more in love with him. His voice was so well remembered to me that I heard it in my dreams and nightmares over three long years, but to hear it again in person, in the real world, to have him back was nearly too much. The Watson that had been a figment of my imagination for what had been far too long a time was better off replaced by a real Watson, one who could hold me and be held in return. One who could scold me and care for me and love me, even in my blackest fits of moods.

 

"Holmes!" He cried it with such enthusiasm that I thought that he might simply explode with happiness. His eyes flashed with exuberant joy. "Is it really you? Can it indeed be that you are alive? Is it possible that you succeeded in climbing out of that awful abyss?" He was wrestling with his own emotions, I saw it in his eyes, and I slid off of the arm of his chair and knelt beside him on the ground. My mind, however advanced it is at discovering mental problems, still sometimes fails on those of an emotional state. But this one I like to think I handled rather well.

 

What we said then has been later omitted from his account of what happened that morning, as it could not be told to the public, but it was said. Watson's eyes softened after those words, and he took my hand tightly in his. "Is it really you?" He asked me again. "Or are you some terrible nightmare, come back to haunt me? A ghost here to fool me into giving up my spirit? A dream? For how oft—" I could see tears stirring in his eyes. He choked with emotion and had to take a breath before he composed himself. "How oft I have dreamed of you coming in that door, coming to find me and make everything better again. You must be real, for if you were not, I do not think I could live. Please, tell me you are no figment of my imagination." I nodded, too overcome for words.

 

"I could ask you the same, my dear Watson. For three long years the thought of you has haunted my every step and all moments, waking and sleeping. You stalk my shadow from sunrise to sunset and pace my mind forever unceasing. I dream of you. You are never gone from my mind." He looked at me, weighing my words of fruitless poetry and knowing just how hard I had worked for them to come to me, and when he took my other hand and held them both tightly, like he would never let me go, I seemed to lose myself. I crumpled into his lap, my face pressed tightly against his side. I could feel tears behind my eyes, but they did not fall, and I could tell he too was fighting them back. He held me then, and I held him, and for an endless moment of time there was nothing more in the world than he and I, than I and he as we braved the tide of solitude forgotten. John Watson and Sherlock Holmes. I could feel him begin to cry happy tears, and when we kissed for the first time, to reaffirm that we truly had found one another again, it was the most profound emotion I have ever felt. I am no brain without a heart. I have a heart. I just bury it sometimes, so that emotions hurt me less. But I feel them just as plainly as anyone else, and then I felt them even more keenly than ever before.

 

"I was so wrong." I told him, holding his face in my hands as we moved closer together. "Never have I made so grievous a mistake. Watson, can you ever forgive me?"

 

"Norbury." He said, and that made my chest hurt. Made my eyes hurt. Made every part of me that had ever cared for another human being since the day I was born into this harsh, unforgiving world, hurt. "Holmes, I don't give a rat's ass if you were wrong. I've never cared. I'm just glad that you are back." I knew he meant it.

 

"Next time, you should say Richenbach," I told him, voice full of sadness and anger, feeling the hatred and the rage in my own voice, but he knew how to assuage away the hurt, to push it down and tamp it away until it was nothing more than a painful memory.

 

"I love you." He told me, hoarsely, crying silently when he had pulled me to him at last and I sat as I had always done so, curled on his lap and chest like a cat, my arms around his neck and my head tucked beneath his chin. I was taller, but I weighed considerably less than him because he was broad and I was as thin as a stick. I fit into his lip like a piece of a puzzle beside it's other. "I love you." He said it again, and I breathed in his smell—the dry scent of paper, the slightly cloying odor of medicine and the deep, heady stench of good tobacco and strong brandy, and I could feel tears in my own eyes again, tears that I could not let spill. Tears that I would not let spill.

 

"I know." I replied, my voice shaking. "I know."

 

 

 

 

 

_3:12 August 1914_

 

I don't think I can honestly say that I have been more happy to see anything than I was the day that I stepped off of the train and saw Watson waiting for me, hat in hand, his blue eyes darting around, trying to find me. Searching for me, the only constant in an inconsistent life. The surge of pleasure I had felt upon returning to England was nothing compared to the infusing revitalization I felt upon simply seeing the good doctor again. As I stepped down to the platform, time seemed to freeze. Like we were the only two people in the world, that nobody else could see or hear us.

 

Even before, after three years, it had not been this hard. Then it had been unwilling, and unbidden. He had not known I remained far apart from him, and I had kept away out of safety. This time it was all entirely willing, and we had known the risks. He had known perhaps better than I, as he always was the one who worried. Two years without so much as a letter, two years without a single word spoken between us. He looked at me, and his kind face broke into a smile, the lines around his eyes and mouth more defined than they had been the last time I had seen them, but practically vanishing with the joy on his face. His golden-brown hair was gray around the temples, and it was starting to recede around the back of his head. He looked older than when I had last seen him. His mustache was completely gray.

 

I knew what I looked like. I had seen it enough in the past two years. My hair was gray, completely now, not just streaks. I knew the lines around my eyes were deep and the lines around my mouth were shallow, the creases on my forehead were harsh and the pain in my eyes was hard. I knew about the goatee. I knew he would hate it. It had taken me three long months of work to get it to grow, and even then it had been bare. Only after six months had it looked even passably realistic. I had never had his gift for growing facial hair, or in fact growing hair anywhere else besides my head. Yet another thing that he found overwhelmingly endearing about me.

 

He took a slow step toward me, hesitant as he did not seem to believe I truly had come back to him, and I dropped my bag to the ground and held open my arms with a pained smile. He ran forward, his limp more pronounced as he aged, and soon his arms were tightly around me, patting my back in a brotherly way and my arms were around him, holding tight enough to never let go. I could feel his lips hidden against my neck as he pressed a soft kiss to the skin bared by my collar. I could feel his hands clinging to my back, fisted in the cloth there, not willing to allow me to leave once more "Sherlock." He said softly, and I held him without saying a word, my nose buried in his hair. I knew I had the rather annoying feature of a long and pointy nose, and I try to avoid jabbing him with it, but sometimes even I cannot hold back. Emotion does not always come easily to me, but when it does come it comes in spades.

 

"John." I replied, as if his name was a prayer. It is but a single syllable—but oh, what a syllable!"Remerciez le seigneur ci-dessus, John." He smiled against me and let go of my back, picking my bag instead. He had picked up on French from me after a few years. While he could never speak it actively, he could speak enough to understand the things I would often say to him. And the long litanies that I would spout in the throes of passion, words that I would never dare voice in English. Things that I would never dare voice.

 

"That goatee is horrendous," he told me bluntly as soon as we broke apart. "You must shave it off at once, I shall not tolerate it in our home." I chuckled and linked my arm with his, feeling happier than I had in a long time simply by being with him. I was practically walking on air. He lit up my life. He always had. We walked a tad more slowly than we usually did, content to just be together for a few moments. "You also look terribly sick. When was the last time you slept?" He looked worriedly at me, suspicion already forming in his mind. Ah, Watson, my dear Watson, always and ever a doctor. I quickly changed the subject to get away from that line of thinking, as he would doubtlessly check my wrist and he would have found marks there that I did not wish to mention.

 

"I am sorry. I feel that the trip over the Atlantic has made me feel more sick than it ever has before." He looked at me, calculating, and then grabbed my wrist and jerked up the sleeve, my bag balanced in his other hand. I could feel his eyes glaring down at my skin accusatorially, at the marks there, and he looked up at me. A frown tugged at the edge of his full, expressive lips.

 

There was so much pain in his eyes. "I thought you promised to stop," he told me quietly, and I felt my chest burn. Guilt is not an emotion I like. I felt it then. "You swore you would not do it anymore. You would not destroy yourself like this. Holmes, it will kill you!" People looked, as his voice was rising.

 

"Watson," I snapped, "I am still Altamont, please—" the look on his face stopped me before I got any further, and I had to look away. I could not bear to face that. It was too clear, too poignant, too painful. Too blatant what he was thinking, to important for me to face quite yet.

 

"You swore to me," he said, voice shaking, and I pulled my hand away to tuck my sleeve back down. I rested my hand upon his for a moment sadly.

 

"I did stop. But then you were gone, and I had nothing left to keep me going." He looked at me sadly, and then he smiled. It was a harsh smile, a smile that made me want to cry. "I could not do it without you." He patted my hand and then took my elbow with his again.

 

"I suppose I cannot begrudge you that too much." He said, and then we lapsed into a somewhat uncomfortable silence. I did not want silence now, though. I wanted to talk to him, talk to him until neither of us could talk any longer. I wanted to hear his voice not turned on me in righteous and deserved rage, and instead, the kind voice I knew so well. I wanted to watch him laugh, cry, dry his tears on my skin, witness his passion and his pleasure, to listen to him sleep, to know his every emotion as clearly as I knew my own. To study the way that his hands moved when writing. To watch him button up his shirt in the morning. To take tea that he poured me, to see him trimming his mustache as he always did, to see him combing his hair. To know everything there was to know about John Watson and know it all and forget none of it until the day I died.

 

"I know, it is an abhorrent thing, is it not?" I changed the topic back to what it had been before that painful interlude. My goatee seemed a neutral enough topic, as both of us equally hated it. Watson's body language was hard to miss, as his shoulders were tight and his face looked even older now, but just as handsome as the day we had met. He smiled weakly at me in thanks, glad that I had steered the topic back in a different direction. "Took me six months to grow, I shall have you know." He smiled for real then, and it warmed me to the bones. All the edge to it was gone, it was just a comforting smile, a smile that said as clear and plain as day that he loved me. "As soon as this business is done with I shall immediately return to our place of abode and remove it post-haste." He nodded as we came out to the car, a little affair that had seen better days. We had gotten the car when it was first becoming popular with some of the money I had saved up, as Mycroft practically ordered me to acquire one so that I could be even more at his direction. I refused to get rid of it when it became outdated. Pack ratting, the good doctor has always said, is one of my least endearing traits. He threw my bag in the boot and started the car before he climbed up, and I sat down beside him as the engine revved to life. My arm slipped around his shoulders to rest on the back of the seat, my fingers just barely touching his coat.

 

He took my other hand tight in his, behind the protective screen of the car sides that shaded us from prying eyes. His anger seemed assuaged for now. I held back tightly. "You shall have to tell me all about it later, my dear man." He told me, taking his hand back to drive. There was an underlaying layer in his words, one I did not fail to catch. He meant both the mission in America and the return of The Habit. "Now tell me where you would like me to go and I shall play chauffeur." I smirked and barked out a laugh, my first laugh in two long, long years. Time always seemed to stretch out indefinitely without him beside me. Seconds were months, days were years, and years were millennia.

 

"Shall I have to pay you, cabbie?" He looked at me when I made the joke, and the heat pooling behind his eyes was enough to make my soul melt. There was still a saddened edge there, but most of it was just heat and love. He smiled, slowly, and my heart did a double take. My tongue was suddenly dry in my mouth, and I scrambled for words. None came.

 

"Oh," he said softly, "I expect to be paid. After all, two years is a very long time to drive a car for someone." The words were innocuous, yes, but I knew what he meant. There was a heat in my stomach that I knew could be quelled only by this man, this man that was the only constant in my life. The only mystery that could never be solved. The ultimate conundrum. Even with my intellect, and years down the road, there were still facets to his beautiful personality that kept me entranced. I would never figure him out. He was like a puzzle to which no matter how many pieces I received I would not have them all. There was no way for me to know everything, I resent that sometimes, but for this one I was thankful. Had I bored with Watson I should not have been given any reason to continue to live. As it was he was the only thing keeping me alive and tied to the world, the safe acceptance of a quiet and early grave through methods of destroying my body given up for a smile, a kiss, the brush of his hair between my fingers when I toyed with it late at night, unable to fall into sleep.

 

"What kind of payment?" I asked, goading him as the car rattled down the road and out into the country. I think right away Watson figured out what I was doing. Of course he did, as he was nowhere near as foolish as he made himself out to be in his stories of our exploits. He was looking at the road, but I could see the humor and passion hidden behind his happy smile, the glitter in his beautiful blue eyes. It was like falling in love all over again.

 

"We'll just have to see about that." He told me, and we continued on our way. My heart pounded in my chest. He knew what those words had done to me, and now he would wait and see just how long I could hold out before I broke.

 

When we arrived at the house, the light upstairs that was to be our signal was still on, glowing like an accusatory eye down at us, telling us we were still unwanted. When five minutes had passed and it showed no sign of changing, I turned to Watson and put on my best smile. He blinked back at me, one eyebrow quirked in a mirror of my own favourite expression, the expression he had lovingly nicknamed the 'you're standing in my light' face. "You are up to something, aren't you, old boy?" He asked me, and I just smirked wider. With a furtive check around us, just to be safe—as we were rather out of sight on a cart track off of the side of the road and not easily seen while we waited for our signal—I knew we were alone for enough time to do what I wished. I think to this day that Watson knew what I was planning before I myself did it, for when our lips met I could swear on all that is good and green in this world he was ready and waiting, not surprised at all.

 

His lips were soft against mine, soft and strong and welcoming. Kissing him was like coming home. Soon he demanded entrance with his tongue and I responded in kind, and before either of us knew it I was in his lap with my legs placed on either side of him, our hard shafts rubbing together, my hands locked behind his head and his resting in the place they knew best, on my hipbones. Two years of hiding and spying had thinned me down even further, and I knew that my skin was barely hanging on my bones. He could tell, but he still worshipped it with his hands. Given time he would worship it with his tongue, I knew. When his thumbs started to trace circles on my skin through the fabric of my pants I shivered against him and leaned further down, wanting to touch every part of him with every part of me and never move away.

 

"Take me," I breathed heatedly against his ear, and I heard his breath hitch in his throat. "Please, Watson. Here. Now." I do not deny it—there was a pleading tone in my voice. My lips locked against his again, begging and pleading with their movement. This time when we kissed it was hot and passionate and I never wanted to stop, just wanted to kiss him until neither of us could ever breathe anything else anymore. My fingers tangled in the soft hair at the nape of his neck, and suddenly I felt the bottom buttons of my shirt being undone, his hands stealing up over my chest, re-mapping familiar territory that had marginally shifted since he had last known it. When he reached my nipples he pinched and pulled and I had to let go of his mouth then, throwing my head back with a subtle moan.

 

Two years. It had been two years since I had felt him inside me, loving me, needing me. Two years since I felt that completion of coming home. Two years since the unique feeling of having my whole body filled, of having his thick shaft inside me, making me whole. I never tired of feeling him enter me, of knowing that he needed me as much as I needed him. We had no lubricant, but after this many years it did not matter. All that mattered was coming to our ends simultaneously, so tight together that there was nothing between us but our skin.

 

We made love there, in the front seat of the car. In a very undignified fashion, I must admit. For men of our age, myself sixty and he only three years over me, perhaps it was a strain on our weary bodies. I certainly did not feel it at the time, although later I did regret being pounded into the steering wheel when the bruises formed on my lower back. All that I felt at the time, however, was euphoria, the completeness of being with the person that I loved most in the world. My husband, for all practical purposes. Never once in the whole affair did our lips break for more than a few moments, and when at last we both reached our end, I slumped down against my Watson, my John, breathing in precious air and his scent and everything that he was and would ever be, and his arms were around me again, holding me tight like I was simply a ghost that would vanish as soon as he let go. It would, we both knew, be rather uncomfortable in a few minutes when our bodily fluids began to cool on top of and inside me, but for now, it was enough to just be together, beside one another.

 

He pressed a feather-light kiss to my cheek, and I huffed. I have always been the more vocal one during sex, and always the less vocal one after. I am quite prone, says the doctor, to rolling over and promptly falling asleep, given the correct positioning. It is not that I do not love him, I simply find myself without energy afterwards. He likes to talk things over, to have nice long conversations. Where he gets the energy for it I shall never know. "It's good to have you back, Holmes." He told me, and I rolled my head to look at him, catching his blue eyes crinkling with a warm smile, the smile that had only ever been for me. Never anyone else.

 

"I'm glad to be back, Watson." I told him, shakily, it taking me a moment to find my voice. We shared one last kiss before cleaning up, preparing for the coming issues, and when we were done he gave me one last kiss before he lowered his head to suck sharply on my collarbone, taking advantage of my marginally unbuttoned shirt.

 

I have always bruised easily. It was no less true then.

 

He moved his head back, a definite mark already showing itself on my skin before I did up the final buttons to my shirt. "I love you." He told me, and no sweeter words had ever been spoken, as far as I could tell, in the history of the Earth. Not even after all these years.

 

"I know." I told him, and then our signal showed. "And I think I know it better than I ever did before now." He chuckled, and once more, Holmes and Watson were off to solve another mystery, leaving behind the two men who cared more about one another than society allowed for another time.

 

 

 

 

 

_4:25 December 1918_

 

"Christmas." Mycroft had his tone to his voice that he knows I abhor deeply, the tone of voice that clearly says how superior he is to me and how he knows exactly what I am thinking, omnipotent and exasperatingly correct in all parts of his deductions. I grunted in response and shrugged, but he just chuckled. He knew my mood."You are not pleased at all? Christmas presents once made you jump with joy, _petit frère._ " I did not turn to look at him then. I knew what he would look like.

 

"You've known me since I was two days old," I told him, looking back over my shoulder at my brother. The only thing that the war had changed with him was that his hair, which had stayed black when mine had shot gray in a rapid succession of two years, was now just as gray. Perhaps we matched even more now, minus the weight. "You tell me, oh brother mine." He came over to me beside the window in his study and looked out over the sleeping city of London with me. It was just past midnight, and the day to come would be the birthday of the Lord, a lord neither of us acknowledged nor cared a whit for. He swirled his glass of wine and took a thoughtful sip, his eyebrows pushed together in thought. His shoulders were beginning to stoop with age, and his broad face sagged with wrinkles.

 

"You miss him." He told me simply, and I winced at the words. No softness there. Sharp as ever, and just as bitingly correct, regardless of my emotions. He knew me better than I did myself. "First two years when you were in America, followed by three years when he was in the trenches. You two had, what, two months together before he was dragged off?" I wished he would not insist on reminding me so often about what I did not wish to admit to myself. I missed him, yes, but when I did not think about it, my heart did not hurt as much.

 

"He made his choice to go to war all on his own," I told Mycroft, not wanting to admit the pain that Watson had left when he went away to war again. He had barely survived the first war on his record, and I was terrified day-in and day-out that this one would do him in. "I did not choose go to America." At least this time we had letters, and on one memorable birthday, a single phone call. He had broken into wracking sobs before we rung off, and had refused another call. I had understood perfectly. Secretly, I was glad he had. Hearing his voice was just too painful. I wanted to see him, not remember some fleeting ghost of his true self when we were still far apart.

 

"He will be back soon." Mycroft told me, and I knew he was right. He was always right. We had received no letters as of yet, but the war was a month done. I knew that any time soon the doctor would be arriving in London, or at least there would be a blessed letter to inform me of his coming return to find me so we could return home together. He knew it was too painful for me to return to our cottage in Sussex alone. "You know that, of course, though."

 

"I try not to think about it." I told him, setting down my glass of wine on a table. The other soldiers were already back, but the one I watched for had yet to come. 

 

"Are you going to bed?" He asked me, and I shrugged, not willing to answer quite yet. How Mycroft could be seventy and still have the energy to stay up for extended periods of time overnight I could not know, as my age and younger exertions were catching up to me. Nights often ended in me retiring early to sleep in beds that had, before I was fifty, held no affection for me. Desks and chairs were not nearly as comfortable to sleep in as they had once been. I felt so much older than I was. 

 

It had long been a suspect of mine that I would die early, but it was proving itself all too true. I only hoped for a few more years with Watson before it was all said and done. "I shall head to bed, brother." I told him, admitting it now. "I am tired."

 

"Oh, I'm not sure that you will." He told me. I stopped and glanced back.

 

I knew that tone of voice. That was the tone of voice he always had when he had something planned or knew something that I did not. In our childhood that had led to a broken wrist for me and a scot-free record for him, among many other memorable occurrences. I turned, my gray eyes finding his, and I quirked an eyebrow. He was grinning at me. "What do you mean by that?" I asked, but I had a vague suspicion of what he was planning, and I would have nothing to do with it. I would not sit up and wait for a call from John Watson. That was not the Christmas present I wanted.

 

"Well, it's not my surprise, so I can't tell you." He was being deliberately obtuse and infuriating, and I was just opening my mouth to scathe him with my tongue, when a voice that I knew as well as my own heartbeat, as well as my own breath, spoke.

 

"Actually, it's mine." I turned, stunned, and saw John Watson standing there, older than the last time I had seen him, his face tired and lined, and my brother beat a hasty retreat from the room when I fell into his arms with a sigh from the very marrow of my bones, a sigh of resignation and understanding, of love. Mycroft was a good brother to me, understanding of the singular relationship I shared with Watson, but he had never wanted to be in on the knowledge of our personal affections. He was long celibate. Watson held me as we rode the cresting waves of the emotion of reunion, and I knew then that neither of us would ever let the other go again. We had come through hell and high water, and that was enough for one life.

 

"John." When his name finally made it's way past my lips, it was a prayer. I could smell him. He was real. He held me back just as tightly, his chin upon my shoulder. "Oh, thank God."

 

"I know." He told me. "I made it home safe and sound. There is no need for you to worry, Holmes. I am here."

 

"Promise me you shall never leave again." I said it, pulling back to look at him, and his hand cupped my cheek. There was a scar on his cheek that I knew immediately had come from an exploding shell. There was some faint whitening to his hair that I knew had to have come from stress, and there was a line of stitches plain on his hand from where he had to have had shrapnel removed. I knew my hair wasn't just gray now either though, as my temples were completely snow white.

 

"No, Sherlock. I love you too much to leave again, ever." I knew he meant it.

 

"Good." Was all I managed before I was back in his arms. "Good."

 

 

 

 

 

_5:3 May 1934_

 

Holmes always said he would go first. I don't think I ever really believed him, since I was the broken one and the older one. I was the one that would logically go first. It was near the end that I realized it, only minutes before he eventually left the world. Of course he had been right all along, as he was the only person I have ever met who is always right. He had been sickening for a long time, an undiagnosed cancer running rampant through his body, destroying him from within. He was curled weakly in our bed, coughing softly, the covers swallowing his shattered and sick body, looking at me and holding my hand tightly. His gray eyes were heated with the burning fire of fever, but were just as beautiful as they had always been. He had lost his voice somewhere in the vicinity of two months before, which had been a source of entertainment to us for a while, as he had always been impossible to quiet for very long. His other hand shook now with age and not the stringent fire of cocaine, but he wrote notes to me in his neat handwriting on an old notebook. It was more than nothing.

 

_'Will you do me a favor?'_ the most recent note asked when he showed me it. I smiled sadly and squeezed his hand, nodding. We did not always need words, but I had always been a writer. I liked words. He found them often pointless, but now that he no longer had his voice, he found words just as useful as I did.

 

"Of course, Holmes." I told him kindly. He was shaking worse than usual, his teeth even chattering slightly. The chills were getting worse from day to day. I had asked him if he wished to go easier, in his sleep, but he had told me it would be too painful to leave without spending every last moment of his life beside me. I could have done that for him. I did it for Mary in what was almost another life now, I simply gave her an easier way out. She had asked me to. It had been hard, for I had loved her in my own way, and then she had slipped away into a restful end. But Holmes refused, we had been through to much together to forego another adventure. He was too stubborn to give in willingly.

 

_'I feel lonely. Join me?'_ He looked hopeful when he showed me this one, and I kissed his hot forehead, his always-pale skin sallow and sickly, heated with a damp sweat that all doctors knew was a sign of death. He had a fever again, something I had tried hard to keep from happening, but doctors can only do so much. Even me, even with love on my side. I shed my shoes and climbed in beside him, my hands going around his bony waist. His face was gaunt when he rested it against mine, his gray eyes searching mine. His cheeks were so sunken there were shadows beneath them, and the circles under his eyes were as dark as night. Almost all of his hair was white now, but we had both been blessedly spared the male ability to bald, something for which I was glad.

 

"John." His voice was hoarse and nearly impossible to catch when he spoke, but there was so much emotion in that one word that I heard it. I could have heard it if I was deaf.

 

"Sherlock." I responded, and he rolled his eyes, smiling softly. I had always felt some need to reply like that when he asked my name like a question, and over time it had become an endearing joke. Our names were such a simple pleasure. Such a meaningful one.

 

"Stay with me." He told me, his hands trembling in mine. "Stay with me, John." The next cough that made it's way up from the depths of his chest and free from his mouth shook his feeble frame against mine, and it only hurt my heart even more to know how little he had left. "Until the end."

 

"Forever, Holmes, not just until the end." I replied, and he pressed his nose against mine before closing his eyes, his once lithe body merely becoming skin and bones as he had sickened. "No matter what." Perhaps he could have lived longer had he eaten more, some sad part of my mind said, but I knew that I could not believe that. Perhaps if he had foregone The Habit, perhaps smoked less and drank less and who knew what else. But none of that could have changed anything now.

 

He was still shaking when he opened is gray eyes again, and I nearly wanted to let him go easily then, he was in so much pain. His eyes were clouded with age, not as sharp as when I had met them, the dank glaze of death creeping in over them and making his world bleach away. But his mind was still just as sharp. "I'm cold." He mouthed, his voice gone again. There were tears on his cheeks. When had he started crying? I wrapped my body tighter around his, and when he rolled over to face me, his sharp face against my neck, I just held him. Held him and prayed to any God that existed to make him well, to give him back to me. To not take him away, not from me. Not now. I did not want to have to live without him.

 

"I love you." He said it suddenly, and it was as if the world stopped. I had waited almost fifty years to hear those simple words, to know what he really thought. He made that emotion clear every day, in every moment of his waking hours, but there was something profoundly different about hearing it. They were only three words, but they meant so very mcuh. "I'm sorry I never said so before." His voice was hesitant, barely audible, dying slowly with the rest of him. My own hands shook, and I cupped his face before I kissed him again. He looked at me with more anguish than I can explain. Like he wanted to kiss me back. Like he wanted to change so many things, to say so many things left unsaid. To tell me everything. 

 

He didn't need to tell me. I learned it all in that one moment, looking into his eyes, and I understood it all perfectly. Words were irrelevant then, simply knowing his thoughts told me all I ever needed to know.

 

"I know." I told him, a mimic of the words he had always replied when I had bared my most secret heart to him. It felt like a profound, and yet understandable, double take. We were back where we had started. He held tightly to me, not willing to let go. Not willing to go away.

 

"I'm scared." He mouthed it, his voice gone. "Of what comes next."

 

"Whatever it is," I told him, "We shall face it together. After all—" My voice died in my throat with a choke, and it was hard to continue. He was still crying, silent tears coursing down his handsome face. "It's just another adventure. One we haven't tried yet."

 

"Of course." He nodded slowly, and smiled a pale shadow of the smile he had once had. The smile that had, once upon a time, fifty years ago, caused a young doctor, a veteran of battle with a body so broken he no longer knew the truth of things, a heart so shattered he tried to forget to exist, learn who he was. The smile that had brought me back. The smile that I had fallen in love with, when I was young. The smile that had, even when I was furious with him, kept me coming back. The smile he saved for me. "John. I love you." I pressed him to my chest. "John." He said it again, shaky. He had to know I was there.

 

"I know." I said, my heart constricting in my chest tighter than I had ever expected it to. I could feel my soul breaking. I could feel the world shattering. Nothing mattered now. "I know, Sherlock. I'm here." He gave a final shudder, and then lay against me, simply a shell of a body. His soul was gone, gone to wherever it is that souls go, and I suddenly wished that there was a God that I believed in, to give me that life after death where all I wished for was to have Holmes back.

 

I held him until he was cold. Only then did I cry.

 


End file.
